Liberty Law Talk

This latest podcast is with Joel Kotkin, America’s Demographer-in-Chief, on his recently released book, The New Class Conflict. Kotkin and I discuss his grave warning of an American future that no longer contains the promises of democratic capitalism. Two groups, in Kotkin’s telling, have converged and share a vision of America that is unconcerned with economic growth, shared prosperity, and the need to rein in state power. The book’s opening argues that this class of tech entrepreneurs and the "Clerisy" pose a fundamental challenge to America's self-understanding as a nation of economic mobility: In the coming decades, the greatest existential threat…Read More

This latest podcast is with Joel Kotkin, America’s Demographer-in-Chief, on his recently released book, The New Class Conflict. Kotkin and I discuss his grave warning of an American future that no longer contains the promises of democratic capitalism. Two groups, in Kotkin’s telling, have converged and share a vision of America that is unconcerned with economic growth, shared prosperity, and the need to rein in state power. The book’s opening argues that this class of tech entrepreneurs and the "Clerisy" pose a fundamental challenge to America's self-understanding as a nation of economic mobility: In the coming decades, the greatest existential threat…Read More

This conversation with Patrick Allitt on his latest book, A Climate of Crisis, provides a historical judgment on the environmentalist movement in postwar America. We see its causes, self-understanding, and the motives and beliefs driving its adherents. Allitt, unlike most in this area, does not come to propose or critique policies, but to note the benefits and consequences that have resulted from the particular brand of environmentalism that emerged in America. Curiously, Allitt notes, environmentalism received its initial energy from the immense capacity for wealth creation that America generated in the postwar environment. This freed us to notice the damage…Read More

This conversation with Patrick Allitt on his latest book, A Climate of Crisis, provides a historical judgment on the environmentalist movement in postwar America. We see its causes, self-understanding, and the motives and beliefs driving its adherents. Allitt, unlike most in this area, does not come to propose or critique policies, but to note the benefits and consequences that have resulted from the particular brand of environmentalism that emerged in America. Curiously, Allitt notes, environmentalism received its initial energy from the immense capacity for wealth creation that America generated in the postwar environment. This freed us to notice the damage…Read More

This conversation with Patrick Allitt on his latest book, A Climate of Crisis, provides a historical judgment on the environmentalist movement in postwar America. We see its causes, self-understanding, and the motives and beliefs driving its adherents. Allitt, unlike most in this area, does not come to propose or critique policies, but to note the benefits and consequences that have resulted from the particular brand of environmentalism that emerged in America. Curiously, Allitt notes, environmentalism received its initial energy from the immense capacity for wealth creation that America generated in the postwar environment. This freed us to notice the damage…Read More

This conversation with Shep Melnick looks into the enforcement practices of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, one of the most powerful and secretive agencies in the administrative state. This agency caught the attention of many in 2011 when Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities lowering the standard of guilt in a sexual harassment or sexual violence proceeding from guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to preponderance of the evidence (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred). Topping it off was…Read More

This conversation with Shep Melnick looks into the enforcement practices of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, one of the most powerful and secretive agencies in the administrative state. This agency caught the attention of many in 2011 when Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities lowering the standard of guilt in a sexual harassment or sexual violence proceeding from guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to preponderance of the evidence (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred). Topping it off was…Read More

This conversation with Shep Melnick looks into the enforcement practices of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, one of the most powerful and secretive agencies in the administrative state. This agency caught the attention of many in 2011 when Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities lowering the standard of guilt in a sexual harassment or sexual violence proceeding from guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to preponderance of the evidence (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred). Topping it off was…Read More

Angelo Codevilla comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his latest book To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations. Our conversation focuses on Codevilla’s main argument that American statesmen increasingly fail to understand the nature and purpose of statecraft: the achievement of peace. So what does it mean to achieve America’s peace? To do so, Codevilla insists, requires concrete evaluation of the means and ends necessary to protect American interests. This requires particular judgments about power, interests, and the practial reality we are confronted with. Our practice, for well nigh a century, has been to speak in…Read More

Angelo Codevilla comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his latest book To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations. Our conversation focuses on Codevilla’s main argument that American statesmen increasingly fail to understand the nature and purpose of statecraft: the achievement of peace. So what does it mean to achieve America’s peace? To do so, Codevilla insists, requires concrete evaluation of the means and ends necessary to protect American interests. This requires particular judgments about power, interests, and the practial reality we are confronted with. Our practice, for well nigh a century, has been to speak in…Read More

Angelo Codevilla comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his latest book To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations. Our conversation focuses on Codevilla’s main argument that American statesmen increasingly fail to understand the nature and purpose of statecraft: the achievement of peace. So what does it mean to achieve America’s peace? To do so, Codevilla insists, requires concrete evaluation of the means and ends necessary to protect American interests. This requires particular judgments about power, interests, and the practial reality we are confronted with. Our practice, for well nigh a century, has been to speak in…Read More

The standard narrative used to justify the existence of the administrative state and thus legitimate its powers is that America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries entered into a realm of industrialization, corporate power and concentration, density and urbanization, among other causes, that entailed the need for expert rule in executive agencies. Necessity of government action required courts and rule-making agencies that could adjust the social order to rapidly arising needs not anticipated in the 'horse and buggy' Constitution. However, what if there really is nothing new under the sun about administrative power? Instead, what if its call…Read More

The standard narrative used to justify the existence of the administrative state and thus legitimate its powers is that America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries entered into a realm of industrialization, corporate power and concentration, density and urbanization, among other causes, that entailed the need for expert rule in executive agencies. Necessity of government action required courts and rule-making agencies that could adjust the social order to rapidly arising needs not anticipated in the 'horse and buggy' Constitution. However, what if there really is nothing new under the sun about administrative power? Instead, what if its call…Read More

The standard narrative used to justify the existence of the administrative state and thus legitimate its powers is that America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries entered into a realm of industrialization, corporate power and concentration, density and urbanization, among other causes, that entailed the need for expert rule in executive agencies. Necessity of government action required courts and rule-making agencies that could adjust the social order to rapidly arising needs not anticipated in the 'horse and buggy' Constitution. However, what if there really is nothing new under the sun about administrative power? Instead, what if its call…Read More

The many schools of originalism all face the same questions: does it merely perpetuate the dead hand of the past? What about the exclusion of women and blacks at the Founding? What does one do with the mountains of non-originalist precedent? This next podcast with our own Mike Rappaport, prompted by his new book that he co-authored with co-blogger John McGinnis entitled Originalism and the Good Constitution, focuses on the rise of originalism as an intrepretative methodology for Constitutional Law and attempts to answer these and other questions with a new framework called original methods originalism. Our discussion thus focuses on…Read More